Two girls aged 15 and 11 have been forced to have the MMR jab against their will by a High Court judge who had to settle a disagreement between their divorced parents.

The girls' mother did not want them to have the inoculations because she was worried about possible side-effects, but their father insisted they should have them.

The girls, referred to in court documents only as L and M, told Mrs Justice Theis they did not want to have the vaccine, but the judge ruled it was "in their best interests" to do so.

The decision was made last month, but the deadline for the girls' vaccinations passed yesterday. The case came to light after court papers were obtained by BBC2's Newsnight programme.

It is only the second time a court has been asked to rule on a dispute between two parents over MMR, and the first to involve children of such advanced years.

The judge said "weight should be attached to the wishes of mature children," but the girls, who live with their mother, were caught up in an "unfortunate" parental dispute and felt they would be letting their mother down if they gave in.

Television remains a key source of news for Americans even as digital media gains importance, a survey showed Friday.

A Pew Research Center analysis showed 71 percent of American watch local television news at home and 65 percent view network newscasts over the course of a month.

Some 38 percent of adults watch cable news, according to Pew, but many of these viewers are highly engaged "news junkies" who spend more time watching than most others.

Pew analyzed data from the ratings agency Nielsen, including Nielsen's national panel of metered homes.

The findings also show considerable "crossover" of the major cable news channels - CNN, Fox News and MSNBC - despite popular belief that these organizations have polarized viewers through political partisanship.

Pew said 34 percent of those who watch the left-leaning MSNBC in their homes also tune in to the conservative Fox News Channel.

Police authorities in Maryland and Virginia reported no major incidents Friday as a result of the much-talked about truckers protest around the Beltway. Drivers of tractor trailers had said they were going to drive slowly to block off parts of the Beltway to protest excessive government intrusion.

There were police reports of about 30 tractor trailers with American flags and signs for their protest - "Truckers Ride for the Constitution" - driving at the same speed as the rest of traffic on the Beltway in Friday morning's rush hour. But by mid-day the truckers appeared to have broken into smaller groups amid already-heavy volumes of traffic and rain showers on a holiday weekend.

Armed private security guards are on the job to keep the public away from Philadelphia's Independence Hall, and one even threatened to arrest a political activist if he stepped on the sidewalk beside the iconic building where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted.

Authorities say the driver who died when his log truck collided with a train carrying 63 sightseers and four crewmembers on a fall foliage trek amid West Virginia's mountains apparently ran through crossing signals that were still flashing when they arrived.

Twenty-three people were injured, six seriously in the rail crossing accident with U.S. Route 250 atop Cheat Mountain, about 160 miles east of Charleston, officials said. The accident occurred during prime leaf-watching season in the heavily forested eastern part of the state.

Randolph County Sheriff Mark Brady said two of the train's passenger cars flipped on their sides after impact at a rail crossing on a mountain highway, the log truck was a "total loss" and the truck driver who was alone in his vehicle was pronounced dead at the site.

Big, heavy logs lay piled about a scene where first responders aided shaken passengers to disembark from their scenic train ride.

"The railroad crossing signals were flashing at the scene. As all emergency personnel arrived, we observed the signals flashing at the time," Brady said in an audiotaped news conference held with hospital officials who emailed the audio recording to The Associated Press.

"At this juncture of the investigation, it appears that the log truck had run through the crossing signals and struck the passenger cars of the train," Brady added in the recorded statement provided to AP by Davis Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Tracy Fath.

She confirmed the injury total after all passengers and crew were taken to that hospital in Elkins, several miles distant from the collision site.

Brady didn't return calls immediately to The Associated Press seeking comment Friday evening about the accident, which he said involved a train of The Durbin & Greenbrier Railroad.

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul", Nelson Mandela says, "than the way in which it treats its children".

Who would disagree?

Yet today children may be assaulted, diseased, or killed by pervasive corporate drugs, junk-foods and beverages, perverted by mindless violence in multiple modes, deployed as dead-end labour with no benefits, and then dumped into a corporate future of debt enslavement and meaningless work. How could this increasing systematic abuse be publicly licensed at every level? What kind of society could turn a blind eye to its dominant institutions laying waste the lives of the young and humanity's future itself?

The abuse is built into the system. All rights of child care-givers themselves - from parent workers to social life support systems - are written out of corporate 'trade' treaties which override legislatures to guarantee "investor profits" as their sole ruling goal. Children are at the bottom, and most dispossessed by the life-blind global system. The excuse of "more competitive conditions" means, in fact, a race to the bottom of wages and benefits for families, social security, debt-free higher education, and protections against toxic environments to which the young are most vulnerable. At the same time, escalating sales of junk foods, malnutrition, and cultural debasement propel the sole growth achieved - ever more money demand at the top.

At least 33 people were reportedly dead and some are still missing after a boat carrying around 250 African migrants capsized Friday in waters between Malta and Italy, a week after a shipwreck left more than 300 people dead near the Italian shores, local media said.

According to Rai state television, 33 bodies including some women and children have been recovered so far after the heavily overloaded boat was toppled as the agitated migrants tried to catch the attention of a military aircraft that was flying over the area, some 104 km south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Earlier reports said some 50 people have died after the boat capsized.

A patrol boat of the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) rushed first to the spot, followed by two Italian navy ships that received an alarm from Maltese authorities. Helicopters were also launching life jackets and rafts into the sea.

Rai said that some 130 survivors were placed on a Maltese vessel, while around 50, including 10 children, were on an Italian navy ship. According to ANSA news agency, another 15 migrants were placed on an Italian fishing vessel.

The incident happened in waters where Malta has search and rescue responsibilities, Italy's Defense Minister Mario Mauro told Rai.

Huge disparities in education between the rich and the poor are at the root of all stupidity.

Are Americans dumb? This is a question that has been debated by philosophers, begrudging foreigners and late night TV talk show hosts for decades. Anyone who has ever watched the Tonight Show's "Jaywalking" segment in which host Jay Leno stops random passersby and asks them rudimentary questions like "What is Julius Caesar famous for?" (Answer: "Um, is it the salad?") might already have made their minds up on this issue. But for those of you who prefer to reserve judgement until definitive proof is on hand, then I'm afraid I have some depressing news. America does indeed have a problem in the smarts department and it appears to be getting worse, not better.

On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the results of a two-year study in which thousands of adults in 23 countries were tested for their skills in literacy, basic math and technology. The US fared badly in all three fields, ranking somewhere in the middle for literacy but way down at the bottom for technology and math.

This shouldn't be all that surprising as there is a well documented pattern of American school kids failing to keep up with their tiger cub counterparts in other countries. But these results are the first concrete proof that this skill gap is extending well beyond school and into adulthood. The question is, do the study's results imply, as the New York Post so delicately put it, that "US adults are dumber than your average human"? Hardly, but it does suggest that many Americans may not be putting the smarts they have to good use, or, more likely, that they are not getting the opportunity to do so. Put another way: it's inequality, stupid.

Hefei - A Chinese farmer could not afford hospital bills to have his leg amputated after suffering an arterial embolism, so used a metal saw and knife to amputate his leg himself. Zheng Yanliang amputated the leg in April this year but the story has just emerged.

Chinese media have just covered the sad tale of Mr Zheng, a Chinese farmer and factory worker from Boading in Hefei Province.

Mr Zheng first started to get pains in his right leg in January 2012. After several visits to the hospital, he was diagnosed with arterial embolism, with amputation the only recourse. His family had no more money to pay for visits to hospital, so Mr Zheng was discharged and given just three months to live.

Neighbors reported hearing his agonized screams at night, local media report. And his wife said the painkillers he had been given did not give him any relief.

Read the first letter from the #31forMarissa project, in which men write about domestic violence experienced by women they know.

When it comes to the movement to end domestic violence, women have remained at the forefront of the struggle. That's one of the reasons that inspired a new campaign called #31forMarissa. The campaign calls on men nationwide to write in support of Marissa Alexander, a Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in jail after firing a warning shot at a wall near her abusive husband.

On September 25, a judge ordered a new trial for Alexander.

Each day, #31forMarissa will post a different letter written by a man about his story of violence experienced by women in his circle - his mom, sisters, daughters or friends. (Read the first letter below.) The letters will run on a blog called theSWAGspot, dedicated to starting conversations by men, throughout the month of October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Hard copies of the letters will be sent to Marissa Alexander.

#31forMarissa was created by Esther Armah, founder of Emotional Justice Unplugged, a multimedia campaign focused on how emotions affect behavior, and Mariame Kaba, co-founder of the Chicago Task Force on Violence Against Girls and Young Women. The Free Marissa Now movement is also sponsoring the campaign.